


Call of the Dawn of the Dead Gears of War

by sinuous_curve



Category: Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 07:46:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>On the days when they’ve spent eight hours running across a city to get to a library because some guy named Phil they ran across in the middle of Missouri cooking cat food over an open fire said he heard they had some old book of ghost stories, Dana tells Marty, “Remember, you were the one who said the world needed to crumble a little.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call of the Dawn of the Dead Gears of War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elementarydearmy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elementarydearmy/gifts).



> My thanks to locketofyourhair for the beta.

On the days when they’ve spent eight hours running across a city to get to a library because some guy named Phil they ran across in the middle of Missouri cooking cat food over an open fire said he heard they had some old book of ghost stories, Dana tells Marty, “Remember, you were the one who said the world needed to crumble a little.” 

Marty has gotten used to carrying a gun, though he’s done that by humming the theme to that one videogame Curt used to play under his breath, can’t really blame Dana for having to point that out again and again. He’s always sort of aware, in a weird way that reminds him of trying to write philosophy papers stoned, that if he’d just let the incestuous sadistic zombies kill him like he was supposed to, she could have gotten away and everything would have carried on just like it was supposed to. 

“I’m just not as good at action movies as I am at horror movies,” he tells her, and because Dana didn’t shoot him and because they are probably the only two people in the world who understand what the fuck changed between things being normal and things being what they are, she grins a little. 

“We should have let that let Ripley-wannabe kill us,” Dana says mildly, jamming another magazine into her gun. She is so, so much better at this than he is. 

They’re crouched behind a brick wall beside a row of bike racks. The collapsed buildings lining either side of the street jut up against the burned out sky like broken teeth. A sickly wind sends old newspapers skittering between the burned out husks of cars and an overturned bus. Marty can smell the old ones on the air, musty like old paper and sour like rotten meat and, admittedly, he had spent time freshman year wondering what a mythical monster would be like if it was real. But the old ones aren’t exactly Godzilla and Mothra. They’re more primal than that. 

The library’s just ahead of them, at the end of the street. Dana lifts up a few inches. Her hair is dirty and dusty, escaping from her ponytail. Right after the old ones escaped from their prison or woke up or whatever the hell it was -- there weren’t exactly a lot of people left alive to find them a leaflet in the wreckage, Marty could not have answered honestly whether he was _actually_ glad that she left him alive or not. Six months later, he’s pretty sure he’s glad he’s not dead, even though it means living in a world where destruction’s coming in bits and chewed off pieces rather than in one big bang. 

Anti-big bang, really. 

“Well, remember we both wanted to see the ancient evil gods,” Marty reminds her. 

Dana drops back down, back against the brick wall. She grins. “We were stoned.” 

“That we were, my friend.” 

There is significantly less weed in this brand new world, too. A more monsters, in addition to the old ones. Apparently the stockpiles of just about every country made a bid for freedom when prison door busted open. They have encountered no less than three _different_ incestuous sadistic zombie murder families (one of which groaned at them in garbled Spanish),, as well as a pod of fucking mermen (who are not a single thing like a sexy sea nymph), a unicorn stained red from the blood of non-virgins (Marty’s assuming there, one of the few survivors of the facility cut it in half with a machine gun before he could get close), and a wide variety of creatures Marty vaguely remembers from three AM B-horror movie marathons. 

“You know what we’re looking for, right?” Dana asks.

Marty nods. “We are looking for _Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark_.” 

Dana raises an eyebrow. A couple streets away, but still close enough to raise up the short hairs on the back of his neck, an unearthly roar rose. It was the sound of despair and unsatiated violence. Marty thinks, for maybe the twenty thousandth time since they crawled out of the cabin wreckage, that if they’d just picked a _different_ group of friends it would have been so much better. Like, he would have obviously been morally outraged. But in the way where he got everyone to sign the Change.org petition and then got to walk around for the next twelve hours feeling virtuous. 

“That’s our sacred manual for defeating ancient evil?” Dana balances her gun over her knees and fixes her ponytail. 

Marty shrugs. “Can you think of anything that scared you more as a kid? I’m making this up as I go along, sister.” 

“True,” Dana nods. “Do you ever wonder why they haven’t just broken the world in half?”

“Yes,” Marty says seriously. “Yes, I have.” 

“Any ideas?” 

Marty straightens up, and opens the clasp on the holster strapped around his thigh. Dana tossed it to him as they were picking through the wreckage of a sporting goods store, and then helped him figure out the buckles. They still had a survivor from the security at that point named Don, and he taught Dana how to deal with the guns and she handed Marty his handgun. He has forgotten what kind it is. 

“If they’d just busted the world in half the movie adaptation wouldn’t be very long,” he tells her sagely. 

Dana rolls her face to the sky, and laughs. “They will never make a movie of this,” she counters, pushing away from the wall and dropping down into her action heroine crouch. The roar echoes again, sounding relatively the same distance away as it did last time. Not that Marty trusts that, since he’s gone from thinking they were scott free to having a carnivorous tentacle wrapped around his ankle in less than thirty seconds, but hey. It’s more encouraging than they time they ended up standing _under_ one of the old ones while a deluge of acidic fluid rained down upon them.

That day sucked. 

“Why would they not make a movie of this?” Marty demands, copying her. He still can’t figure out how the simple fact of her playing _Fallout_ means she can just pick this shit up. 

“One, Hollywood is probably a burning wreckage,” Dana says. “Two, they’d never be able to animate the old ones and not make them look stupid. Are you ready?”

Marty nods. “That’s true,” he agrees. “And they’d try and hide it with the shaky cam bullshit. And yeah, I’m ready.” 

“God knows we don’t want shaky cam bullshit.” Dana puts her gun to her shoulder, the old one roars again, and a hot wind blows. Marty wishes for a split second he’d spent more time watching Die Hard movies and taking notes instead of making fun of Bruce Willis hairline as it receded, but such is life. “Let’s go,” Dana says. 

She takes off down the street and, after a beat, Marty follows.


End file.
